….and the Art of False Labeling

Maand: januari 2014

The international peace conference on Syria opened today with deep divisions over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad. Meeting in Switzerland, armed rebels and the Assad regime are holding their first direct talks along with representatives of the United Nations, United States, Russia and other world powers. In his opening remarks, Secretary of State John Kerry ruled out the inclusion of Assad in a transitional government, the conference’s stated goal.

Secretary of State John Kerry: “Mutual consent, which is what has brought us here, for a transition government means that that government cannot be formed with someone that is objected to by one side or the other. That means that Bashar Assad will not be part of that transition government. There is no way, no way possible in the imagination, that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain the legitimacy to govern. One man and those who have supported him can no longer hold an entire nation and a region hostage.”

The Syrian regime has scoffed at demands for Assad’s departure. Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari, dismissed what he called outside interference in Syrian affairs.

Bashar al-Jaafari: “We are here to discuss the future of Syria — Syria as a country, as a whole country. We are here to discuss the future of our own people. We don’t get any lessons from anybody. This is a national Syrian dialogue among the Syrians themselves.Read on…

On January 17, US Secretary of State John Kerry insisted that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would have no place in Syria´s future and did not rule out increasing US pressure on Damascus.

“There is no political solution whatsoever if Assad is not discussing a transition and if he thinks he is going to be part of that future. It is not going to happen,” Kerry said. “We are also not out of options with respect to what we may be able to do to increase the pressure and further change the calculus,” he added.

Kerry’s remarks came ahead of the Geneva-2 conference, which is scheduled to open in Montreux (Switzerland) on January 22 and is theoretically aimed at paving the way for a negotiated solution of the Syria crisis.

At the same time, Kerry has rejected the participation of Iran in the Geneva-2 talks and accused Iranian policies of causing “adverse consequences in Syria.” On this issue, Washington has clashed with Russia, which supports Iran´s presence in the event.

When Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov warned that the exclusion of Iran from the Geneva-2 conference might ruin any chance for a resolution of the Syria conflict, the US Secretary of State bluntly replied that the only acceptable solution to the crisis was on US terms. He demanded the Syrian President´s ouster and the creation of a “transitional” government, in which half the seats would be given to the US-backed opposition. Kerry called it “common sense” to exclude Iran, which has not agreed to such a US-imposed “transitional” regime. That is, the US administration is trying to give the armed groups fighting against the Syrian government a victory that they were unable to achieve in the battleground.

The US, the UK, France, Britain and their allies in the region -Turkey, Qatar and especially Saudi Arabia- have used terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda-affiliated groups and tens of thousands of foreign militants, as their proxies in a war for “regime change” in Syria. As a result, more than 100,000 Syrians have been killed.

After a talk with Kerry, during the last meeting of the so-called “Friends of Syria” group in Paris, Syrian National Coalition (SNC) leader Ahmad Jarba, a Saudi-backed figure, indicated that he was satisfied by the tone of the conversation and the renewed US focus on regime change. “We all agreed there is no future for Bashar al-Assad and his family in Syria. His departure is inevitable,” he said.

However, the SNC cannot hide its frustration. For months, the Geneva-2 conference was put off due to the lack of interest of the opposition. Only when the date had already been set and under strong US and British pressure, it finally decided, during a meeting held in Istanbul on January 18, to attend the event.

Actually, the SNC members had bet on a repetition of the Libyan scenario, including a Western military intervention, in order to grasp the power in Damascus, but their judgment was proven to be wrong. Washington has clearly showed that it does not intend to launch a war against Syria because the American people are just fed up with wars in the Middle East and the US economy is unable to bear the costs of another ruinous conflict, which would also likely to involve other countries both in and out of the region.

The agreement on the participation in the Geneva-2 conference cannot hide the deep divisions within the coalition. Some of its members have criticized the actions of Jarba and the method used for his re-election. Several weeks ago, he sent a letter to UN Secretary General stating that the SNC would go to Geneva without having asked the General Council what its opinion was in that regard.

To all this must be added the issue of credibility, which has dogged the SNC since its creation a year ago. This body was set up under intense Western pressure to try to form a united opposition body. However, it lacks the support of both the Syrian street and of the most important armed groups that fight on the ground. In September, a dozen of the most prominent armed groups broke with the SNC and its military wing, the Supreme Military Council, and stated that they did not represent them. Several more armed organizations have since followed.

For its part, Damascus said in a statement that decisions in Paris were “closer to illusions than reality and taken by people who are detached from reality and extremely far from any acceptable political logic.” Syria has made it clear that Assad, who enjoys an overwhelming support in Syria, could be a candidate in the 2014 presidential election and nothing can prevent him from doing so.

On January 7, Syrian Information Minister Omran Zohbi stressed that dialog with the opposition could lead to the formation of a national unity government or an increase in the number of ministers. However, a transitional administration, as existed in Iraq during the US occupation, is completely discarded, he said.

US to restart aid shipments to armed groups On December 11, the US stated that it had suspended its official aid shipments, carried out along with covert weapons shipments monitored by the CIA, after it emerged that US aid to the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) had gone to the so-called Islamic Front (FI), which overran the northern headquarters and two warehouses belonging to that group. An anonymous senior administration official then admitted to the New York Times that “there’s no way to say 100 percent that it would not end up in the hands of the Islamic Front”.

According to US officials, Washington is now preparing to restart shipments to the FSA following the FI’s decision to join the war on the forces of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an Al Qaida-linked group rejecting any negotiations or dialog with Washington. The US administration is reportedly trying to reconcile the FSA with the IF. The latter was set up in September under Saudi sponsorship and is led by a Saudi agent, Zahran Allouche. It has a Wahhabi ideology and collaborates with the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front.

Actually, Washington is also trying to initiate a relationship with the IF. According to Al-Akhbar newspaper, a meeting was held on December 18 in Istanbul between representatives of the US administration and “intermediaries linked to the IF, not representatives.” Kerry previously used the term “moderate” to describe the IF, which wants to create a Taliban-style dictatorship in Syria. Its leader, Zahran Allouch, has publicly showed his sectarian hatred by attacking Shiites in Syria and comparing himself to Omeyya rulers who fought against the Family of the Prophet Muhammad.

However, US attempts to reach such a rapprochement with the IF face numerous obstacles.

Firstly, the IF does not seem too inclined to start a relationship with Washington. US Ambassador in Syria Robert Ford revealed on December 18, in an interview with Al-Arabiya television, that the IF had refused to meet with representatives from the US administration. “We are ready to sit with them because we talk to all parties and political groups in Syria. However, the IF has refused to sit with us without giving any reason,” Ford said, a day after Kerry described as “possible” a meeting with the organization. Apparently, the IF knows that US policies are deeply unpopular in Syria and does not have much to win by publicly appearing like another US puppet in the country.

Secondly, the links between the IF and Al Qaeda are becoming too evident. The top political leader of the Islamic Front, Abu Khaled al Suri, who is also a top figure in the rebel group Ahrar al Sham, acknowledged on January 17 that he considered himself a member of Al Qaeda. Ahrar al Sham is one of the most powerful groups fighting against the Syrian government and one of the largest groups aligned with the IF.

He also accused the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (EIIS), another radical rebel group that has been attacked by other rebel groups for the past weeks, of not being al Qaeda’s real representative in Syria and not following the way of Al Qaeda’s founder Osama bin Laden, its current leader Ayman al Zawahiri, and Al Qaeda´s slain leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who was killed by a US missile in 2006. In fact, Zawahiri himself designated Al Suri to mediate disputes between ISIS and the Al Nusra Front, another Al Qaeda affiliate.

Al Suri’s admission has undercut Western hopes that the new Islamic Front could prove to be an acceptable replacement for the moribund Free Syrian Army and a counterweight to the rising influence of other Al Qaeda-linked groups in Syria

“Al Suri’s prominence in Ahrar al Sham and his public statement praising Zarqawi and Zawahiri will make it very difficult for the US administration not to designate Ahrar al Sham as a terrorist organization” said Will McCants, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Project on US-Islamic World Relations, to the McClatchy newspaper.

Thirdly, the rival armed groups are fighting each other near the northern cities of Aleppo, Idlib and Raqqa and that is weakening all of them. This fighting has claimed more than 1,000 lives, including the mutual execution of dozens of prisoners. The fighting is taking place between the FSA, the IF and Al Nusra Front, on one hand, and the ISIS, on the other hand. The Ahrar al Sham Brigade, one of the leading IF-affiliated groups, has lost 400 men in the combats.

In short, US support for the Geneva-2 conference is only a hypocritical attempt to cover up a failed criminal policy, which has fuelled a civil war in Syria in which Western powers and some Arab countries have used terrorist organizations, some of them tied to Al Qaeda, as proxies in order to set up a puppet regime in Syria. However, it is likely that US plans to put their Syrian allies in power will keep on failing as they have done up to now.

You’d be forgiven for knowing very little about the unrest in Ukraine – the violence, the rioting on the streets, the armed protesters storming government buildings amidst plumes of thick black smoke rising from makeshift barricades. Most of the public have once again been Beibered by the mainstream media – the arrest of this precocious, spoilt physical embodiment of crass corporate culture proving newsworthy enough for an MSNBC host to interrupt an interview with a member of Congress discussing the true scale of NSA spying.

In this climate of superficial distractions and media inanity, you’d be equally forgiven for not really knowing why there is political unrest in Ukraine. Most of the explanations for the violence offered by the mainstream media present the information in simplistic soundbytes – talking points without the relevant wider political and historical context which renders current events coherent.

The following article from The Independent provides us with a brief overview of the media’s presentation of recent events in Ukraine:

In November President Viktor Yanukovych decided to pull out of a treaty with EU, an agreement many felt would have paved the way for the Ukraine to join the union. It looked like he was going to sign the agreement before performing a U-turn, which has made Ukrainian disappointment all the sharper. However the government would rather stay friendly with Putin in return for favourable treatment. The protesters think it would benefit ordinary people far more to be aligned with the EU and consider Yanukovych a man who only represents the interests of the richest.

The article goes on to define the demonstrations as “more than a pro-EU movement”, one which represents popular resentment towards perceived government corruption and violent repression towards peaceful activists.

President Viktor Yanukovych’s government forces are certainly guilty of using excessive force against the rioters, and accusations of torture appear to be well-founded and should not be excused. But condemnation is certainly clouded when you consider the level of violence from the rioters. By the same token, when mobile phone users near the scene of the riots received text messages from the state reading, “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass riot” it brought to home just how omnipresent – and ominous – surveillance technology in the 21st century has become.

The problem with the “popular protests against the government and for integration into the EU” narrative is that it omits crucial information regarding the role of the West is fomenting and orchestrating demonstrations such as these; a role which illuminates broader geopolitical objectives in the region and the extent to which intelligence agencies and their offshoot organizations meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations. Understanding the nature of soft power – the use of coercion and bribery – and the subversion and infiltration of grassroots political movements by NGOs and other organizations backed either directly or indirectly by the US government, helps us to more broadly understand why the unrest in Ukraine is reaching such a fever pitch.

The seemingly spontaneous 2004 Ukrainian “Orange Revolution”, sparked by alleged electoral fraud and allegations of voter intimidation, was led largely by a number of grassroots movements tied to political activists and student groups. Many of the groups involved, however, were funded and trained by organizations intimately linked to the US government. The foreign donors of these groups included the US State Department, USAID, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Open Society Institute and the National Endowment for Democracy.

The candidate who emerged victorious in the wake of these widespread orchestrated protests, Viktor Yushchenko, was not only endorsed by the same institutions which wielded their influence over the protest movements themselves, he was also supported by the International Monetary Fund. A central banker by profession, Yushchenko was a firm advocate of implementing IMF monetary reforms and, equally crucially, an advocate of NATO membership. Before entering into Ukrainian politics he had worked at the US State Department,the Reagan White House, the U.S. Treasury Department, and the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. In short, it’s safe to say that he was a product of Washington, an image only exacerbated by his hostility towards Russia.

It is tempting to automatically assume that the same process is taking place in Ukraine at the moment. Certainly, intelligence agencies have historical form when it comes to covert operations and the manipulation of activists via social media – similar US-backed “Colour Revolutions” have taken place in Georgia, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. The widespread political support for the protesters in Ukraine and the lack of condemnation for their use of violence would certainly add to the view that these protests are at least tacitly backed by the West, if not outright orchestrated. While none of this constitutes “proof” of outside interference, at the very least it is enough to raise suspicions. On the other hand, without firm evidence it is perhaps equally plausible that the support for the protesters is simply a case of making political capital out of the situation, stoking the flames of an already lit fire.

As the violence on the streets of Kiev continues, already spreading away from the capital, the Russian State Duma recently passed a resolution slamming foreign politicians and other players for interfering in Ukrainian internal affairs in an attempt to escalate the conflict. It’s a marked contrast to the rhetoric emerging from Washington and the EU, both of whom have expressed the possibility of intervening, with the US adopting a stance which hints at another planned “regime change” on Russia’s doorstep.

Perhaps the most damning indictment of the West’s stance over Ukraine and their support for what they refer to as a “pro-democracy protest movement” is the profoundly anti-democratic leanings of the violent protestors at the vanguard of the assault on the Ukrainian authorities. Anyone familiar with the crisis in Syria and the attempts to topple President Assad will be all too familiar with the US’s willingness to get into bed with extremists of the worst possible nature in order to achieve their objectives.

In Ukraine today it appears that very little has changed. Just as the Western-backed Syrian rebels with intimate ties to al-Qaeda were presented in our media as “pro-democracy” organizations, so too are many of those protesting in Ukraine drawn from far-right and fascistic groups such as the opposition Svoboda party, whom John McCain was more than happy to appear on stage with in December 2013 and offer his – and by extension America’s – support.

Yet it would also be wrong-headed to characterize the protests in Ukraine as being led by far-right extremists – many protesters are taking to the streets through genuine and legitimate grievances with the current government. The danger lies in these moderate protesters allying themselves with those on the far-right – combined with tacit support from the US for the likes of the Svoboda party, it could be a concoction which would set the stage for a dictatorship far more corrupt and repressive than those currently clinging onto power.

With the geopolitical stakes as high as they are, not least with the potential for a broader NATO influence in the region, it would be wise to view the situation in Ukraine through the wider prism of the global balance of power and all that this entails. Equally, we should be wary of simplistic media narratives which seek to paint any conflict in black and white/good vs. evil terms, particularly when the “good guys” are being backed by the US government and her allies. All too often this amounts to little more than propaganda designed to rouse support for opposition movements favourable to “regime change”, and by now it should be very clear how little this has to do with vague, idealistic notions of “democracy”, and how much it has to do with regional – and ultimately global – hegemony.

To justify the failure and fall of the revolution , today there is a clear and apologetic tone high in the media ” set out that ” victory for the ” Islamic Front are organized by “Saudi Arabia, even the so-called ” Free Syrian Army , are organizations fabricated by the regime from Saudi Ariab according to the Syrian intelligence.

A statment by” Ali Mamlouk (Ali Mamlouk (Arabic: علي مملوك‎) (born 19 February 1946) is a special security adviser to Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and is one of his trusted men.[1] Mamlouk is also head of the Ba’ath Party’s National Security Bureau. Ali Mamluk was born in Damascus into an Sunni family on 19 February 1946.[2][3] There is another report giving his birth year as 1945.[4] His family…

THIS IS NOT A JOKE, I am Emailing to 2700+Marines & all SKYPE CONTACTS

Gepubliceerd op 21 jan 2014

“Adherents to Shariah are fundamentally and unalterably opposed to the survival of the Constitution of the United States.” -Tennessee state Rep. Rick Womick

“Tennessee state Rep. Rick Womick, who participated in a panel called “Defending Liberty in Legislatures,” is an Boeing 777 airline pilot who has flown five flights with Somali immigrants on board from London to New York City.”http://www.wnd.com/2011/11/367193/

*** I was not a participant in this on air interview. Here is Tennessee State Representative Rick Womick’s response to this radio interview of Dennis Schuelke by ‘Heads Up Warriors’ Host Kathy Rubio.

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-Rick Womick

Rev. Michelle Hopkins…
My name is Rick Womick and I am a State Representative from Tennessee. I am also a commercial airline pilot. Your recent guest, Mr. Dennis Welke, is extremely misguided. None of what he said is true regarding our nation’s commercial airlines or the conference at which I spoke; no papers surrendering our Constitutional rights are required to be signed, and no illegal immigrants are being flown into this country on empty flights. We don’t just “taxi by customs and drop people off” somewhere on the airport. Mr. Welke fabricated the entire story. First of all, I was not the pilot in command. Secondly, our aircraft are filled with hundreds of paying passengers, of all nationalities, from all over the world, and who are traveling legally with valid passports, and entering our country through U.S. Customs and Immigration as they deplane. We do not, nor have I ever flown, an “empty” or full airplane with illegal passengers or immigrants. It is obvious Mr. Welke does not agree with my conservative political positions and has decided to publicly attack my character and my integrity. Given the constant inaccuracies in his story, I think it is safe to say Mr. Welke is not even a pilot. He lacks credibility and is pursuing an agenda.

Russian president Vladimir Putin, after winning the popular vote of the Russian people and retaining his presidency in 2012, has declared that he and his administration have identified and removed from all positions of power those men and women who were agents of the New World Order agenda to bring Russia down from the inside by collapsing the economical, political and social structure of his country.

In Putin’s victory speech to the Russian people (see video below), Putin praises the Russian people who, he says, recognized the impostors who were attempting to…

Why is the Atlantic slowly filling with crude petroleum, threatening a millions-of-years-old ecological balance? Why did traders at prominent banks take high-risk gambles with the money entrusted to them by hundreds of thousands of clients around the world, expanding and leveraging their investments to the point that failure led to a global financial crisis that left millions of people jobless and hundreds of cities economically devastated? Why would the world’s most powerful military spend ten years fighting an enemy that presents no direct threat to secure resources for corporations?The culprit in all cases is neoliberal ideology—the belief in the supremacy of “free” markets to drive and govern human affairs. And in the years since the initial publication of Noam Chomsky’s Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order, the bitter vines of neoliberalism have only twisted themselves further into the world economy, obliterating the public’s voice in public affairs and substituting the bottom line in place of people’s basic obligation to care for one another as ends in themselves. In Profit Over People, Chomsky reveals the roots of the present crisis, tracing the history of neoliberalism through an incisive analysis of free trade agreements of the 1990s, the World Trade Organization, and the International Monetary Fund—and describes the movements of resistance to the increasing interference by the private sector in global affairs.In the years since the initial publication of Profit Over People, the stakes have only risen. Now more than ever, Profit Over People is one of the key texts explaining how the crisis facing us operates—and how, through Chomsky’s analysis of resistance, we may find an escape from the closing net.

Norman Solomon, author of War Made Easy, spoke at a Stop the War Coalition meeting in London on 9 August 2013, organised in support of Bradley Manning, the whistleblower who lifted the lid on the war crimes that have been carried out in secrecy behind our backs.

Norman Solomon travelled from the meeting to deliver a 100,000 name petition to the Nobel committee which called for Bradley Manning to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Green Shadow Cabinet calls on President Obama to pardon Bradley Manning for his courageous work exposing U.S. war crimes and State Department deception. Thanks to Manning’s revelations of Iraqi deaths and human rights abuses by the American military, Iraq refused to renew immunity for U.S. soldiers, forcing President Obama to pull out at the end of 2011. Thus, Manning deserves much of the credit for ending the immoral, devastating, multi-trillion dollar U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Manning’s leaks also revealed corruption and betrayal in repressive Arab governments — including Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Sale’s secret deal with the U.S. allowing drone strikes within his country, and the financial excesses of Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidin Ben Ali. These disclosures helped trigger democracy movements of the Arab Spring that continue to this day.Though Manning has been accused of endangering national security and the safety of intelligence sources, no actual harm was established in court hearings. And in secret testimony previously revealed by Reuters, state department officials acknowledged that the leaks were embarrassing low level secrets but they did not actually damage U.S. interests.

Bradley Manning has already spent three years in jail and months enduring solitary confinement and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, according to the UN special rapporteur on torture. He should not have to spend another day being punished for revealing critical truths that the American people had a right to know. Now Mr. Manning is facing up to 136 years in prison for doing the work that the U.S. press should have been doing, had they not been missing in action on investigative reporting for the past decade. In fact, Bradley Manning is a hero for telling the truth to the American people — that our government was committing war crimes in Iraq and betraying basic American values of honesty and respect for international law in routine state department operations.

We therefore call on President Obama to urgently pardon this courageous whistleblower. American democracy will be more secure, and the American people will be safer for it.~ Dr. Jill Stein serves as President of the Green Shadow Cabinet of the United States